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This paper investigates the challenges and opportunities for the deployment of whistleblowing as an accountability mechanism to curb corruption and fraud in a developing country. Nigeria is the institutional setting for the study.

Adopting an institutional theory perspective and a survey protocol of urban residents in the country, the study presents evidence on the whistleblowing program introduced in 2016. Nigeria’s whistleblowing initiative targets all types of corruption, including corporate fraud.

This study finds that, even in the context of a developing country, whistleblowing is supported as an accountability mechanism, but the intervention lacks awareness, presents a high risk to whistleblowers and regulators, including the risk of physical elimination, and is fraught with institutional and operational challenges. In effect, awareness of whistleblowing laws, operational challenges and an institutional environment conducive to venality undermine the efficacy of whistleblowing in Nigeria.

The study presents a model of challenges and opportunities for whistleblowing in a developing democracy. The authors argue that the existence of a weak and complex institutional environment and the failure of program institutionalization explain those challenges and opportunities. The authors also argue that a culturally anchored and institutionalized whistleblowing program encourages positive civic behavior by incentivizing citizens to act as custodians of their resources, and it gives voice to the voiceless who have endured decades of severe hardship and loss of dignity due to corruption.

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse the extent of protection available for whistleblowers in South African criminal cases.

This paper first provides a brief background of crime in South Africa and argues that the concept of the whistleblower is just a buss word or collective noun. The methodology of this paper consists of a literature review of whistleblowers and relevant laws that can be used to protect whistleblowers in South African criminal cases.

This paper concludes that the existing law as primarily contained in the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977 provides appropriate protection for whistleblowers in South African criminal cases.

Whistleblowers provide information on criminal, civil and disciplinary wrongdoings. This study focuses on the protection of whistleblowers pursuant to mainly the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977.

The originality of this paper lies in the approach to the handling of whistleblowers in South African criminal cases. This is the first research done with the emphasis on the use of mainly the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977 to protect whistleblowers in South African criminal cases. The contribution of the study is that, by using this approach, it can provide protection and save lives, and it may enhance the willingness of whistleblowers to blow the whistle, which will be beneficial to the community of South Africa as a whole.

In the scope of the immense growth of corporate frauds and scandals, reporting unethical practices could be considered as an important mechanism to control them and ultimately improve organizational quality. To this end, this study proposes the conceptual framework comprising the enablers impacting employees' tendencies and behaviors to reporting misdemeanor in the workplace.

Systematic review of literature has been carried out. To understand the complexities among various enablers and to analyze their driving power and contingencies, a modified total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) approach has been adopted.

The findings indicate that enablers such as moral identity (MI) and job satisfaction (JS) having higher driving power (come at the bottom of the hierarchy) are relatively more important. Furthermore, perceived personal cost (PC), moral courage (MC), self-efficacy (SE) and anger have high dependent power of factors. Finally, the paper provides two paths that can lead to whistleblower's ethical decision.

A conceptual framework delivered in this paper requires to test against the field data. However, the conceptual understanding of driving enablers paves the way to top management in recruiting and hiring people in the workplace.

This study represents the first attempt to apply TISM for whistleblowing phenomenon. It provides a comprehensive conceptual framework in order to address the relative importance of various individual enablers in developing reporting tendencies against misdemeanors.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the appropriateness of the factors that contribute to building a better whistleblowing environment and culture within an organisation and provide guidelines on how to build a better whistleblowing environment within an organisation.

In total, 592 questionnaires were circulated to 148 accounting firms licensed to carry out statutory audits of public limited companies expecting responses from 4 stakeholders from each entity. Out of the 592 questionnaires, only 148 questionnaires were usable, representing a 25 per cent overall response rate.

It is recommended to encourage a proactive whistleblowing environment by encouraging whistleblowing culture among employees of the organisations. However, there is disagreement among the respondents for some of the selected components that contribute to building a better whistleblowing environment and culture within an organisation.

The findings of this study can be used by the management of the organisations to identify frail areas of whistleblowing initiatives within the organisation and take remedial actions rectify the issues. Authorities can use the findings of the study to implement or amend the existing rules and regulations to encourage whistleblowing.

This study in contrast to the existing studies on determinants of whistleblowing attributes, provides knowledge on developing components/guidelines to encourage whistleblowing attributes and culture.

This study is motivated to provide a theoretically informed, data-driven assessment of the consequences associated with the participation of non-human bots in social accountability movements; specifically, the anti-inequality/anti-corporate #OccupyWallStreet conversation stream on Twitter.

A latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling approach as well as XGBoost machine learning algorithms are applied to a dataset of 9.2 million #OccupyWallStreet tweets in order to analyze not only how the speech patterns of bots differ from other participants but also how bot participation impacts the trajectory of the aggregate social accountability conversation stream. The authors consider two research questions: (1) do bots speak differently than non-bots and (2) does bot participation influence the conversation stream.

The results indicate that bots do speak differently than non-bots and that bots exert both weak form and strong form influence. Bots also steadily become more prevalent. At the same time, the results show that bots also learn from and adapt their speaking patterns to emphasize the topics that are important to non-bots and that non-bots continue to speak about their initial topics.

These findings help improve understanding of the consequences of bot participation within social media-based democratic dialogic processes. The analyses also raise important questions about the increasing importance of apparently nonhuman actors within different spheres of social life.

The current study is the first, to the authors’ knowledge, that uses a theoretically informed Big Data approach to simultaneously consider the micro details and aggregate consequences of bot participation within social media-based dialogic social accountability processes.

The main purpose of the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) sustainability case is to allow students to explore how nonfinancial information reported in sustainability plays a vital role in maintaining a trade-off between current economic pressure and future environmental needs.

This is an exploratory study in nature using a qualitative case study approach. The case requires an examination of DEWA's sustainability reporting (SR) in the context of Global Reporting Initiatives (GRIs). This case is designed to assist students in gauging DEWA's sustainability and explore how the company evaluates the materiality of sustainability issues.

With stakeholders' and investors' increased interest in sustainability, the authors argue that accounting programs should incorporate this topic into their curricula. The case enables students to focus on sustainability-related initiatives with DEWA that are aligned with GRI initiatives. The case might be instructive for both undergraduate and postgraduate students studying environmental and management accounting.

This case study is the first of its kind in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region to comprehensively analyze DEWA's sustainability practices concerning GRI-based SR. This study widens the understanding of DEWA's implementation of GRI standards in the preparation of its sustainability reports.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his 2018 State of the Nation Address, stated that “Thieves who are stealing public funds should be arrested and prosecuted”, and called for lifestyle audits of public-sector employees. The gross misuse of COVID-19 relief funds by public officials indicated the urgent need to execute these audits as an anti-corruption measure. This paper aims to provide a review of the existing state of affairs with regard to the application of lifestyle audits in South Africa.

This paper critically analyses the literature available on the current position of South Africa concerning lifestyle audits in the public sector, based on the mandates of some of the anti-corruption agencies that could be responsible for the conducting and processing of such audits.

South Africa has only recently seen a framework for applying lifestyle audits, developed by the Department of Public Service and Administration. Although these first steps in developing a standard practice are laudable, the practical process of dealing with misconduct and/or criminal matters remains to be seen. It is recommended that South Africa consider a legislative approach to dealing with unlawfully obtained wealth by either criminalising the act of illicit enrichment (per the United Nations Convention Against Corruption) or creating an Unexplained Wealth Order, as seen, for example, in the UK.

South Africa is in dire need of addressing corruption in the public sector. Despite lifestyle audits being called for, the lack of proper implementation is negating any positive outcomes. Therefore, alternative solutions should be investigated.

This study provides in-depth explanation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) fraud prevention towards sustainability business.

This study applies a qualitative research method, i.e. case study, to address the specific research objective.

The finding revealed a GST prevention model towards sustainable business. The finding shows that it is pertinent for the government to set preventive strategies in order to retain sustainable income for the government. Two essential dimensions emerged in the findings to support preventive strategies, namely macro- and micro-level measures.

The findings of this study provide managers, investors and policymakers with evidence to what extent GST fraud could be minimize in order to safeguard government source of revenue and retain sustainable business in a country. As GST is an important source of revenue for the government, it is thus crucial to prevent fraud from occurring.

Past studies have primarily focused on GST implementation from the perspective of service tax effectiveness and efficiency. However, this study examined the impact of GST fraud to determine measures that could ensure service tax sustainability using preventive strategies, in turn, introducing to the existing literature on indirect tax.

Corruption continues to ravage societies around the world. The fight against corruption can be fruitful only if approached from multiple standpoints. Thus, corruption must also be approached from an academic and educational perspective. The purpose of this paper is to provide a good practice example of how universities and business schools can take actions to align themselves with the international sustainability and anticorruption agenda.

The six principles of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) provide a framework for higher education institutions to address corruption-related issues. This paper presents the case story of the Swiss-based University of Applied Sciences HTW Chur, which developed an academic working agenda on corruption-related topics based on the principles of the PRME.

The case story shares the actions that HTW Chur has taken and the benefits that have resulted from the university’s work. The findings show that to address corruption-related issues, scholars from the university took actions related to four principles in the PRME: method, research, partnership and dialogue. Furthermore, the results indicate that in addition to the university itself, public and private institutions have also profited from the actions taken.

This paper is founded on a single case story; thus, the usual limitations of this research design apply.

It becomes apparent that the needs of the private sector in the fight against corruption could be addressed by engaging in and strengthening partnerships with universities. Thus, it seems beneficial to develop guidelines and standards to facilitate collaborations and dialogue in a participatory and transparent way.

The paper provides a good practice example of how universities can take actions to align themselves with the international sustainability and anticorruption agenda.

Information Systems research on emotions in relation to using technology largely holds essentialist assumptions about emotions, focuses on negative emotions and treats technology as a token or as a black box, which hinders an in-depth understanding of distinctions in the emotional experience of using artificial intelligence (AI) technology in context. This research focuses on understanding employees' emotional experiences of using an AI chatbot as a specific type of AI system that learns from how it is used and is conversational, displaying a social presence to users. The research questions how and why employees experience emotions when using an AI chatbot, and how these emotions impact its use.

An interpretive case study approach and an inductive analysis were adopted for this study. Data were collected through interviews, documents review and observation of use.

The study found that employee appraisals of chatbots were influenced by the form and functional design of the AI chatbot technology and its organisational and social context, resulting in a wider repertoire of appraisals and multiple emotions. In addition to positive and negative emotions, users experienced connection emotions. The findings show that the existence of multiple emotions can encourage continued use of an AI chatbot.

This research extends information systems literature on emotions by focusing on the lived experiences of employees in their actual use of an AI chatbot, while considering its characteristics and its organisational and social context. The findings inform the emerging literature on AI.